Thursday, 23 April 2009

FO - drunken bee socks!!

I've had this pattern printed out for ages, and since I couldn't find proper motivation or concentration to go find a new pattern on ravelry, I just flipped through the folder and pulled this one out to have a go at.

I attempted these socks before, quite a while ago now, and it didn't go well ;) I tried it on DPNS, and with twisted stitches at the beginning of every DPN, it wasn't long before my needles fell out of the stitches, I got lost in the pattern, ripped them out, and put the pattern away. But I figured, now I know how to do magic loop, maybe it'll be easier. The stitches wouldn't be able to fall off the needle so easily on a circular.

And it was easier!! I still had to concentrate quite hard on the actual stitch pattern, as it's quite involved and intricate, but it went much faster than before. I didn't have to rip back once!

It's a fantastic pattern, I love how intricate it is, and it's very pretty. I wouldn't recommend it to beginners though, for a couple of reasons. One, because I had so much trouble with it the first time, even though I wasn’t even a beginner then, and also because the way the pattern is written out is pretty sparse. You have to make up how you do a lot of things, like the heel, toes, and pattern down the side of the actual foot, so you really need to be comfortable with sock structure, and adapting stitch patterns. But they look very impressive when you can do them! :D But, yeah, I'd definitely recommend using the magic loop method too!

They took me ten days, according to ravelry, and that was with a few days of working on other projects (I'm still swapping and changing between projects, to keep myself sane!!) I'm going to cast on another pair of socks now, because I feel like working on socks has definitely helped my motivation. They're small, portable, and have so many points at which you can get a sense of achievement, like finishing the cuff, or the heel, or the whole first sock! I love sock knitting! :D